


The Harvest for the Seed

by cosmogeny



Series: The Tracks Above, the Tunnel Under [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Coming Out, Distance, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Texting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 12:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9123400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmogeny/pseuds/cosmogeny
Summary: Phil's gone away for a family reunion and Dan is left at home to contemplate the various ways he shouldn't come out.Can probably be read as a standalone work, but you should readThe Unexpected Harvestanyway :)





	

**Author's Note:**

> CW: The very first line of this fic is a tweet discussing the consumption of human flesh by non-human animals. It's not at all graphic, but if that makes you uncomfortable you can easily skip the line and not miss much.

> **Dan Howell** @danisnotonfire 43s  
>  i think it’s good cats eat you after you die. i think dogs should too, i don’t want man’s bff to starve u know? #foodforthought #foodfordogs 

 

He gets like this, when Phil is away. Needy and a little stupid and starved for attention. He knows he’s being an idiot. Phil still texts him all day, still Facetimes him before bed, sends him pictures of cute dogs on the street or pubs with funny names or, one memorable time, the back of a stranger’s neck moments after a bird had shit on them. It’s like Phil’s still next to him. It’s like he’s hardly even gone.

 

But he is gone. And Dan has gotten too damn used to being within arms reach, too used to being able to just take Phil in like the tall drink of water he is, seeking out Phil’s smile to clear away any negative thought that tries to worm its way into his consciousness.

 

Almost like clockwork he gets a text from Phil.

 

_Why are you like this >:-( _

 

 _hey u made the choice to love me  
_ _no complaining ever_

 

_Funnily enough I don’t recall signing any affidavits to that effect…._

 

_i dont recall agreeing to date a dude who flees north for family reunions and leaves me behind :(_

 

_Shame :( We had a nice run yeah? Good that we never married, divorce is very messy_

 

Phil’s joking. And Dan knows that. He does. But he still gets that brief, panicky feeling in his chest at the thought of how easy it would be for Phil to walk away. Phil who’s always been so good at saving his money and whose family would welcome him home for however long he needed and who could never be as invested in this as Dan is. Nobody could ever be as invested in anything as Dan is in this relationship, he thinks. And because Phil’s not here, he’s allowed to be as ridiculous and dramatic as he pleases and doesn’t have to worry about schooling his face.

 

In the end, Dan just sends him a picture of one of the suitcases that’s still in the hall.

 

_good thing u never unpacked_

 

***

 

_Half my family are asking where you are and the other half are trying to set me up with their neighbors_

 

Dan grins down at his phone, tamping down the minor flare of jealousy in favor of elation at the fact that people expected him. Phil’s family expected him. He’s been texting back and forth with PJ, trying to plan a day to catch the train to Brighton because it’s been far too long, but his lightning fast response to Phil would have been so even if he hadn’t had iMessage open.

 

_um excuse them but they need to step off_

 

Dan waits another ten minutes for a reply, losing a couple rounds of Rolling Sky in the process and laughing when Peej sends him a fucking _essay_ about why they should join the Sock of the Month club he’s been subscribed to.

 

 _You could’ve come along and defended my honor!_  
_Apparently we WERE able to bring our live-in co-sinners???_  
_But instead I am here looking like a 30 year old spinster  
__"Last eligible Lester bachelor” is a phrase that I’ve actually heard more than once_

 

 _im long distance grumpy now  
_ _tell them u left the future mr lester at home >:(_

 

_The future Mr. Lester???_

 

Dan grimaces, smacks himself in the forehead, then promptly starts blushing. They’ve talked about this. Of course they have. It’s been eight years, how can you love someone for eight years and never discuss marriage? But the certainty he’d felt vanishes under a warm blanket of embarrassment.

 

_fuq off m8_

 

 _Nope_  
_I don’t think I will  
_ _Tell me more about this Dan Lester you speak of_

 

 _oh deary me it seems the co detector has gone off_  
_must evacuate  
_ _ttfn_

 

Dan closes out of iMessage and ignores the sudden influx of vibrations from his phone, switching over to Twitter instead.

 

> **Dan Howell** @danisnotonfire  
>  apparently philly is considered a bachelor by lester family standards. will have to put a ring on it after all #peerpressue

 

He considers sending the tweet for a full two minutes before it makes its new home in his drafts.

 

***

 

“We can’t ever get married,” Phil tells him when they’re on the phone later that night. There’s humor in his voice and he sounds too tinny and far away down the line as Dan waits for him to continue. He refuses to allow himself to feel sad or disappointed before Phil’s even said two sentences.

 

“Okay,” is what Dan ends up saying, when it becomes apparent that Phil is waiting for a reply. He means it to come off like he’s fine with that, like Phil hasn’t in fact crushed his very soul, but Phil can read him like no one else, even hours away.

 

“ _Dan_ ,” he says, exasperated. “That wasn’t even a discussion, oh my god. You just gave up.”

 

“Well if you don’t want—”

 

“I never said I didn’t want! You know what I want. I was just trying to be funny, I was going to make a joke about you being the worst bridezilla to grace the earth.”

 

“I resent that.”

 

“But do you deny it?” Phil asks.

 

“Well, no,” Dan admits. “But I’d have to be! I’d be overcompensating for your atrocious taste and your pea-brained ideas and—”

 

“FYI, this is not the way to convince me to marry you,” Phil butts in.

 

“I haven’t proposed,” Dan reminds him.

 

“And you won’t,” Phil says. There’s a confidence to his tone that Dan’s always admired. He feels like he could believe anything Phil says if he’s using that voice. “I know you won’t. You’ll want me to do it, and you’ll want it to be very extravagant and romantic and you’ll want it to be private but _deep down_ , if our lives weren’t what they are, you’d want me to do it in front of a hundred people. And you’ll cry so much that you get a dehydration headache.”

 

“Shut up,” Dan grumbles. He allows himself to feel grateful for Phil’s absence for just a minute, because it means Phil can’t see his face. Can’t see the shade of red it’s turned, slightly deeper on that stupid little patch on his cheek. Because Phil is right. Because Phil knows him shockingly well. Horrifyingly well. Better than people should reasonably be able to know each other and still get along. Dan has spent too many Decembers watching _Love, Actually_ with Phil, too many sick days in secondary school watching soaps with his mom, too many date nights with his exes watching whatever romcom was playing at the time. He’s got _ideas_ , okay? He’s got _fantasies_ and _dreams_ and truthfully Phil could ask him through the shower curtain, when Dan’s got soap in his eyes and Phil couldn’t wait another five minutes to take a piss, and Dan would still say _yes_ , one hundred times, and he’d cry badly and blame it on the chemical burn of his shampoo but he’d be _engaged_. He’d be engaged to Phil and he’d be thrilled but he can’t help the dumb part of him that wants Colin Firth to propose to him in mangled Portuguese in front of an entire town.

 

“Don’t worry, princess,” comes Phil’s voice, teasing but with a timbre that snaps Dan out of his thoughts and makes him _want_. “I’ll make sure you’re well seen to.”

 

***

 

He’s going about it all wrong. He’s treating it like a performance, he’s putting too much of danisnotonfire into it and not enough Dan Howell. But how would Dan Howell tweet? He was still a teenager before he was a YouTuber. He’s never really had much opportunity to use social media as anything but a means for self promotion and he’s not sure how to start. Or even if he should.

 

Teenaged Dan was an embarrassment not only to himself but to humanity. There isn’t much worth reliving from those days, and he certainly shouldn’t be trying to emulate the way he used to be.

 

Sincerity is key, probably. And he sincerely misses Phil. That much hasn’t changed at least. He remembers being 18 and glued to his phone, texting Phil, tweeting Phil, making plans to Skype with Phil, counting down the days until he and Phil would be together again. _God_ , he was a melodramatic little shit. _Still am_ , he thinks and grins as he starts composing a tweet.

 

> **Dan Howell** @danisnotonfire  
>  I wonder how biology can explain the physical pain you feel in your chest when all you want to do is be with someone D: 

 

His thumb hovers over the “Tweet” button for only a few seconds before he closes the app and shuts that whole train of thought down altogether. Some things are better left in the past.

 

***

 

 _This_ is the real Dan. Lying in bed, unable to sleep, scrolling way too far back on his camera roll and alternately laughing and sighing. He always ends up with too many shots when trying to take a selfie and can never be bothered to delete the failures. It clogs up his photos and makes it harder to spot the gems, like this picture of PJ attempting to play Splatoon with socks on his hands, or the 3-picture saga of Martyn getting chased by a swan, or really, every picture of Phil he’s ever taken.

 

They have this thing—Phil calls is sniping—where they’re constantly in competition to see who can get the most unflattering picture of the other when they’re unaware. It’s unclear who’s winning, or if anyone actually can, but it feels like victory every time Dan scrolls through his photos like this. Phil doesn’t photograph well on the best of days, and the pictures Dan has of him, blurry and poorly lit from unflattering angles, would not make anyone look twice. Dan looks twice. Looks a hundred times. Can’t help stopping on these pictures. Phil at the dining table with his mouth wide open and a straw halfway to its destination, then Phil noticing Dan’s phone and posing seductively with his drink; Phil scrunched into the sofa with about six chins and a bit of melted marshmallow stuck to his lip from his hot cocoa; Phil in the disastrous aftermath of his short but colorful career as a gymnast, having drunkenly attempted to do a flip over the couch at the suggestion of Cornelia.

 

Dan stops when he reaches a few shots from when they filmed PINOF 6, shocked that he’s scrolled this many years back but drawn to a picture of Phil’s bare back. Dan had gotten ever so slightly distracted when they’d switched shirts, his eyes first catching on the freckles across Phil’s back and then flitting over to the discarded sharpie. He’d only spent about ten minutes staring before he’d realized the only thing he could really make was one of those barn-style houses where you can’t lift the pen or draw back over a line you’ve already created. So he’d made one, but it was sharpie, so Phil had complained that he couldn’t reach that spot in the shower and it stayed on for weeks because Phil can’t stand joint showers and would rather have a shitty, doorless house on his back than sacrifice any hot water to Dan. But it was worth it, Dan thinks. He sees all those suggestion blogs and shitty romantic Tumblr posts about connecting someone’s freckles like constellations and he laughs because Phil has a fucking brainteaser that stumps kids in primary school on his back, not Draco or Leo Minor, and he secretly loves it. The same way he secretly loves Phil.

 

But it doesn’t have to be a secret, he reminds himself. He opens Instagram, spends about twenty minutes fiddling with the filters until he finds one that makes Phil’s skin glow in just the right way, and even gets as far as captioning it before he realizes that he’s about to put Phil’s naked torso on the internet, and it’ll be there _forever_ , and not only did he not ask Phil if it was okay but he also has gotten suddenly and irrationally jealous. He covets the knowledge of Phil’s stupid freckle design. It’s not information for public consumption.

 

Everything he’s tried feels too personal, too involved. Their viewers don’t need to know the intimate details, Dan tries to remind himself. They just need to know.

 

***

 

Phil’s been snapping him from the train home, risking motion sickness to create what he keeps referring to as masterpieces. He’s drawn extraordinary facial hair on multiple passengers, turned a dog into a stegosaurus, and made Dan cry with laughter at his attempt at _Starry Night_ featuring his own face as the moon. He always has his fingers at the ready when Phil snaps him. More often than not it’s nothing terribly worthy of viewing for more than ten seconds, but sometimes Dan wants to look at his terrible selfies for _eleven_ seconds, okay? It’s not a big deal. He thinks Phil is hot and he likes to immortalize those good looks with a cheeky screenshot. So his fingers are already in place when the next snap comes in. It’s Phil again, staring faux-longingly out the window, one hand against the dirty glass with tears drawn under his eyes and a bonnet drawn around his head. _When will my husband return from war?_ it reads, and Dan holds down the buttons and revels in that little shutter sound.

 

He double taps to reply and just sends Phil a shot of his middle finger, writes _You left not me!_ and sends it before realizing his timer was on three seconds. Phil maybe won’t be able to read it in time, but he’ll still get the idea, Dan figures.

 

This time, he doesn’t even open Twitter before deciding against posting it. His first thought is that the meme’s a bit stale, followed quickly by the realization that people may think Phil is actually his husband. He glows with warmth, just a bit, at that thought and thinks, _One day. One day he will be._

 

The official deciding factor is that it is very obviously a snapchat he’s screenshotted, and even though everyone _kind of_ knows they have the app, it’s a bit different to put it out there so blatantly and Dan very much doesn’t want to deal with the increased battle cry for a public account. Snapchat is for his friends and his family, not for his viewers, and he’d like to keep it that way.

 

 _Arriving in twenty minutes!!_ reads the next snap. The text is blown up large and covering Phil’s face but Dan can still see the slightly ashen tone of Phil’s skin, the queasy look behind his eyes. He opts not to respond, because Phil will _read it_ , the idiot, and probably send _another_ response, and he’ll end up getting sick all over the nearest passenger.

 

***

 

Phil’s been home for three days and Dan will probably never understand _why_ he could miss this so much. They’re lying in Phil’s bed, _Kiki’s Delivery Service_ on the TV though they’re not paying a ton of attention to it. Phil is on the RSPCA’s Find A Pet site, cooing at all the adoptable dogs in their area, and Dan is playing a stupid picross game on his phone and trying very hard not to look over at Phil’s screen because they can’t have a dog right now, not yet, and he’s afraid of the way his resolve weakens with every one of Phil’s quiet little _awwww_ s and every perfect ugly little mutt that’s staring at him from Phil’s screen.

 

They’re ignoring the TV and each other, for the most part. Phil’s got an ankle over Dan’s at the bottom of the bed, his feet sticking out of the blanket because they get too hot, and he occasionally knocks elbows with Dan when using his trackpad to zoom in on a picture, but it isn’t like they’re talking. It isn’t like they’re snuggled tightly together. Phil hasn’t even kissed him since this morning. And yet Dan _missed this_ , these quiet, private, nothing little moments. Love is very weird and he hates how much he likes that.

 

The next time Phil accidentally elbows him he misclicks a box in his game and loses the level. Shrugging, he closes the app and scrolls through Tumblr for a bit before hopping over to Twitter.

 

That’s when he sees the trending hashtag.

 

Suddenly it’s like Phil isn’t even next to him anymore, like there’s nothing on the TV, like Dan isn’t even in a room on this plane but in some weird void where nothing exists but his phone. He types furiously, fiddles around with the wording, gets slightly hung up on the character limit before he feels satisfied in any way and when he resurfaces and allows himself to focus on the world again, Phil is staring at him, one eyebrow raised and a look of bemusement on his face.

 

Dan, overeager and a little nervous, shoves his phone right into Phil’s face and the tip of Phil’s nose ends up deleting a letter somewhere in the middle. He corrects the error while Dan practically vibrates next to him, must read it over about a thousand times if Dan’s perception of time passing is correct, which it probably isn’t, before Dan panics and reaches for it back.

 

“You hate it. Okay. It’s okay, I’ll—”

 

“Nope,” Phil says, and Dan watches in horror as he _presses the fucking tweet button_ and hands the cell back to Dan. “It works,” he says, smiling one of his gentle, barely there smiles. He throws an arm around Dan’s shoulder and says, “Look at this dog.”

 

Dan is immobile under his arm, staring at the side of Phil’s face, heart racing. “ _Phil_ ,” he whispers. “What the fuck.”

 

Phil looks back over at him and doesn’t even have the decency to look sheepish. “You’d never have done it,” he says, matter-of-fact. “You’d have sat here debating it for long enough that your phone would die, and then you’d say that it was a sign, and then you’d have another freakout about whether you even _should_ do it, and it’s only April, Dan, you’ve had about three since you decided and you never talk to me when you get in your head like that, so I did it for you.”

 

“ _Phil_ ,” Dan says again. The rapid beating of his heart hasn’t slowed any and he feels slightly dizzy.

 

“You’re welcome,” Phil says a little primly. “Now look at this dog.”

 

“ _Phil_ ,” Dan says, and he starts shaking as his phone begins vibrating and doesn’t seem to stop. All their friends have probably seen it by now, and he knows they’ll be supported in this, their friends have _always_ supported their relationship, but if their friends have seen it then their _fans_ have seen it, and what if Dan’s _parents_ have seen it? What will his gran say? What if—

 

“Hey,” Phil says, reaching out and pulling Dan’s trembling body into him. “You wanted this, yeah? You still do?”

 

“Yes,” Dan says immediately. He _needed_ this, never mind the desperate wanting. “I’m just…” he trails off, unsure what to say, unsure how to put his thoughts into words. It doesn’t even feel like he’s thinking anything.

 

“Then let’s be happy that we’ve done it, okay?” Phil says, his fingers trailing soothingly up and down one of Dan’s arms. The other hand shuts Dan’s phone off and tosses it to the foot of the bed. He presses a kiss to Dan’s temple and squeezes him a little too tight and Dan thinks it’s not enough, he needs to be held tighter, to be fully grounded by Phil, but he just sits quietly in his arms.

 

“Dan Howell is officially out of the closet,” Phil whispers into his ear. That thought seems to fill the empty space in his head, echoing around, and he stops shaking though his heart’s still going way too fast. It feels good. It feels _right_.

 

“Yeah,” he whispers, swallowing thickly. “Yeah.”

 

“And he’s dating a hot older man,” Phil says, and Dan snorts and whacks him in the arm but then surges up and kisses him, deeply, until his heart’s rapid rhythm can be explained another way. He isn’t crying, but his eyes are a little misty and he feels like he could, maybe.

 

“The hottest,” Dan agrees, grinning into Phil’s mouth. “The hottest, oldest man around.”

 

“Dan Howell is out of the closet,” Phil reiterates. “And he used to have a hot older boyfriend but unfortunately he was too much of a prat for the charming, devastatingly handsome—”

 

“Shut up,” Dan says, sniffling a little, hiding his beaming smile into Phil’s neck. “Shut up, you can literally never get rid of me.”

 

“I’m going to move to Florida and replace you with an alligator,” Phil tells him, hands sliding down Dan’s back. “It’s going to be called Dan Howlligator and we’re going to start a gaming channel called Croc and Phil Games and I’m going to win all the time because it can’t hold a controller.”

 

“You can’t call it Croc and Phil Games if it’s an alligator,” Dan says, and squeaks when Phil slaps him on the bum.

 

“I can do what I like!”

 

Dan grins into the side of Phil’s jaw, presses a few teasing kisses down it until he reaches Phil’s chin. “Mmm,” he sighs, “If only there was something here you liked.” He wiggles a bit in Phil’s lap and does his best to look ravishable. “Then maybe you could do something…”

 

“I like this dog,” Phil says, pulling his laptop back over and setting Dan aside. “Maybe I could adopt it…”

 

Dan can see the grin that Phil is trying to hide but he doesn’t call him on it. Instead he just turns the macbook so they can both look at it and allows his heart and mind to settle. He can’t truly forget about the storm that’s waiting for them, but the truth is that it’s a self-created one, and one they wanted at that. He’s able to push it to the back of his mind, still there but just a distant hum, in favor of scrolling through the RSPCA’s website with his head on Phil’s shoulder. He drifts off after a while, picturing a house somewhere by the sea with a nice sized garden, watching Phil and their dog play from the back window. The future seems so bright and open, now. So definite where it was once contingent on jumping the coming-out hurdle. Through his mostly closed eyes, Dan can see Phil bookmarking the adoption application, and he falls asleep with a kind of happiness he’s never known.

 

> **Dan Howell** @danisnotonfire 43m  
>  straight until proven otherwise, then gay because you've been dating a man for 8 years #BisexualProblems

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Joe Pug's _Hymn #101_
> 
> I have a Dan and Phil sideblog with a whopping 0 followers, a bad theme, and almost no content for anyone who likes shitty things: cosmogenies.tumblr.com


End file.
